You're right, however not everyone has the same desktop space to accomodate a 27" panel. I can barely fit a 24" on my desk. 1440p monitors start at 25".
> The other footnote should be that display prices have been crashing recently.
When I was in the US at the end of 2014, one of my friends said the same thing about flash drives when I pointed out a $44 PNY 128GB flash drive. Unfortunately, other parts of the world doesn't work same way. Because EUR or other currencies are not fixed against US$, and prices fluctuate at most parts of the world if not increase. So, no, technology doesn't become cheaper as it matures at some parts of the world unfortunately.
Addendum: BTW, you are right about the 768p screens are generally found in entry level laptops or netbooks. These devices are most feasible ones when they first came out. Now they are bottom end cash cows which are virtually free to build.
You can get 24" 4k (2160p) 180ppi 60Hz for $300 e.g. LG 24UD58.
Anything higher resolution-wise requires a much larger display to be readable at 100% scaling. I'm adamantly against using scaling.
Why?
Perhaps my experience would have been better on a desktop, but this was for my work where I have a Surface Pro which when going from a docked to undocked state (or vice versa) with monitors that didn't match the same scaling as the surface resulted in graphical issues that can only be resolved by logging out then in again.
Also still come across apps that don't know how to scale so that can be really frustrating.
I have to say you have it exactly backwards!
Gaming on 4K is extremely expensive and still basically impossible at refresh rates higher than 60 Hz. In fact, you’ll be lucky to get even that much. 1440p/144Hz is a much better and more realistic target for even the most enthusiastic gamers.
Also a most welcome recent trend has been to ship with novel temporal antialiasing techniques, completely redefining how games can look at lower resolutions.
Temporal artifacts have always been the bane of 1080p, forcing higher resolutions either directly, or indirectly as subsampling. Once you take that out of equation, the benefit of native 4K is much more modest.
4K movies are nice, but as with games, it’s more of a linear progression. I doubt most people could even tell the difference in a blind test.
Full-range HDR is, in my opinion, a much better investment if you want to improve your TV viewing experience (and lately gaming as well) in a noticeable way.
I don’t know much about graphic design, but I doubt 4K is all that essential. Everyone has been using 96 dpi displays to create content for very high density mediums for a long time. Even the most craptastic ink printer is 300 dpi+. All you need is a zoom function. Color reproduction is, I think, much more important than resolution.
Where HiDPI displays really shine is actually in the most mundane: font rendering.
For anyone that works in the medium of text, programmers, writers, publishers, etc., a 4K display will be a considerable and noticeable quality-of-life improvement.
Even the most Unix-neckbeardy terminal dwellers will appreciate the simply amazing improvement in visual fidelity and clarity of text on screen[1].
> I tested out a 4k 28" and unless I had it at 200% scaling couldn't use it for longer periods of time.
That’s what you are supposed to do! :)
It’s only HiDPI at 200% scaling. Otherwise it’s just 2160p, or whatever the implicit resolution is for some partial scaling value.
For 4K at 100% scaling you’d need something like 45" screen at minimum, but that’s not actually practical once you consider the optimal viewing distance for such a screen, especially with a 16:9 ratio.
> I get more screen estate and still readable text with the 25" 1440p.
A 4K display should only provide extra space indirectly. With text on the screen looking so much sharper and more readable, it might be possible to comfortably read smaller font sizes, compared to equivalent 96 dpi display.
If you also need extra space as well, then that’s what 5K is for.
Though for things like technical drawings or detailed maps you can actually use all the extra 6 million pixels to show more information on the screen.
A single-pixel–width hairline is still thick enough to be clearly visible on a HiDPI display[2].
> but now you have to render 2.4x (Vs a 2560x1440 monitor) the amount of information for what I think is fairly little gain.
Yes, that’s an issue with things like games. However you can still display 1080p content on a 4K screen, and it looks just as good[3], and often even better[4].
Most graphics software will also work with 1080p bitmaps just fine. Vector graphics necessitates doing a little bit extra work, but for a very good payoff.
Overall though, for things like programming or web browsing, it shouldn’t matter. I have a netbook with a cheap Atom SoC (Apollo Lake) and it can handle 3K without breaking a sweat. That much more capable[5] GPU on your Surface Pro should easily handle even multiple 4K displays.
Pushing some extra pixels is not a big deal, if all you’re doing is running a desktop compositor with simple effects.
> going from a docked to undocked state (or vice versa) with monitors that didn't match the same scaling as the surface resulted in graphical issues that can only be resolved by logging out then in again.
Yeah that must suck. Still, it’s only a software bug, and you mustn’t let it keep you from evaluating HiDPI on its merits.
> Also still come across apps that don't know how to scale so that can be really frustrating.
That’s life on bleeding edge ;)
Sure, it’s annoying, but the situation is a lot better than it used to be. Even Linux is doing fine, at least if you stick to recent releases. Some distros like to ship outdated software for some reason :/
Still, in my opinion, the quality-of-life improvements of a HiDPI display very much outweigh the occasional inconvenience. Though obviously, YMMV.
[1] https://www.eizo.be/eizo-pixeldichte-im-zeitalter-von-4k-e5....
[2] Assuming you’re viewing at optimal distance.
[3] With the notable exception of 96dpi native pixel art.
4K has exactly 4 times as many pixels as 1080p, so it shouldn’t be an issue in theory. Nearest-neighbor will give you exactly what you want.
However in practice you need to force scaling in software, otherwise graphic drivers, and most monitor’s postprocessing, tends to default to bicubic scaling. That said, pixel art is not computationally expensive, so it’s mostly just an inconvenience.
[4] You can use advanced scaling algorithms to upscale 1080p to 4K and it usually looks great. E.g. MPV with opengl-hq profile or MadVR on Windows. For that you’ll need something a notch over integrated graphics though, e.g. RX 560, GTX 1050 and on mobile Ryzen 2500U or equivalent.
[5] http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-HD-4000-Mobile-12...
I'm with you on accurately calibrated monitors though! God most of them suck out of the box.
I’m not being sarcastic. The last time there was a thread like that on HN a bunch of people figured out they need glasses.
I have a 4K @ 24in monitor (180ppi) and a 267 ppi netbook and when I switch between them the 4K starts looking like a blurry mess!
Its fair advice, but some eyesight issues cannot be solved with glasses.. if they can be solved at all.
Also worth noting that with TVs the distance matters a lot. With monitors, laptops, and gadgets it is relatively stable.
Don't get me wrong, I can see a difference, but not nearly as night and day, especially when it comes at the cost of other features (eg refresh rate... which isn't the end of the world for coding so if it's the only thing you do on the monitor it could be worse... otherwise ouch my eyes.)
What scaling is that? 200% scaling is what you should have, 4K is exactly 4x as many pixels as FullHD. If someone is using lower scaling then they are trading sharpness for virtual space.
Both displays are around 200 pixels per inch, plus or minus. It's great not having to see the pixels, so much more pleasant and easy on the eyes.
Also the combination of a portrait display with the landscape display is really nice. I can read an entire PDF page without scrolling.
The original Windows "standard display" was assumed to be around 96 DPI. That's the monitor that 100% scaling (i.e. no scaling) is intended for. Round the 96 up to 100 and we can say that in rough terms, the percentage scaling should be in the neighborhood of the monitor's DPI.
So monitors in the 200 DPI range are best at around 200% scaling.
A 28" 4K UHD has 157 DPI, so I wouldn't want to try it at 100% scaling - ouch. It ought to be running in the 150-175% scaling range.
The idea with a high-DPI monitor isn't to make everything smaller on the screen, it's to make everything sharper and more detailed. When you double the DPI and scale appropriately, you get four times the number of pixels for everything you put on the screen.
That’s not how it works. Lower dpi does not somehow give you more real estate!
You should still be running with ~200% scaling because you are viewing it at a greater distance.
Optimal viewing distance, assuming 16:9 ratio, is 120 cm vs 140 cm for 24" vs 28", respectively[1]. Accounting for the difference gets you ~155 ppd with both monitors[2][3], maintaining 25.0° horizontal viewing angle.
The closer your viewing distance the more ppi you need for the same density. That 28" is not inferior to the 24", when you account for distance, despite the lower ppi, because the greater viewing distance makes the pixels look smaller, thus creating more dense image.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_size
[2] http://phrogz.net/tmp/ScreenDens2In.html#find:density,pxW:38...
[3] http://phrogz.net/tmp/ScreenDens2In.html#find:density,pxW:38...
Also, apps that don't scale properly are a pain haha.
You need a higher PPI to make anti-aliasing work on screen (finally looking nearly as nice as print).
The other footnote should be that display prices have been crashing recently. You can get an IPS 24" FHD monitor for like $90, and a QHD version at 27" for about $150. Those would have been twice as expensive a few years ago.
That being said, all those 768p screens are crappy plastic laptops with really slow hard drives. That I guess is what we end up with the Intel took what should have just been the natural evolution of notebooks - small SoCs running a high PPI display in a metal frame - and made them into some premium brand name product with a huge margin on the prices of chips that cost peanuts to manufacture because they didn't have any real competition in the space for a very long time (and even then, their monopolistic behavior lets them keep AMD out of all the major brands premium notebooks anyway).